Xtuners BB9 5th gen Prelude

[xtuners]

Hello. I would like to introduce my 5th gen Prelude.

Current status as of Sep 2015



I bought it like 8 years ago from Germany. It came bone stock with the F20A4 engine with around 50 000 miles on the clock and tiptronic gear box. I was actually searching for a car which I can use as a demonstration vehicle in my small business project. I was mainly interested to get a stock car with perfect "body" and clean interior. The engine was not that important to me at this point.

This is how the car looked like when I got it - year 2007 :











Then I started with the mods on the car. The Prelude never was an every day car ..more the weekend car type.

year 2008:









year 2009:



















year 2010:











Year 2011



I bought this little beast and the Prelude was abandoned in my garage The scooter turned to a tuning project and all my money for the Lude was gone.





year 2011 - 2015


In this time frame I really had no time for fun because I was busy with something else all the time . I did have the chance to make some major upgrades on the car, but I had no time to enjoy driving it.
This is what happened with the car in this time frame:



































Here are some of the most interesting mods:


Engine

F20A4 Frankenstein build with lots of parts from the H23
- K&N panel air filter
- H23 intake manifold with working IABs
- aftermarket H23 headers
- full 57mm stainless steel exhaust system ( straight pipe ) with big stainless steel muffler

Body

- Pearl silver paint / high gloss black
- Mugen replica rear wing
- Motegi sides and rear lip
- Custom front lip
- Momo FXL One 17" Black Edition Wheels on 215/45/R17 Sumo tires
- Tinted rear lights in Chery Red / Black
- Tinted JDM fog lights and side markers
- 35W Xenon high gloss polished headlights
- custom made badges - 3 different sets

Interior

- custom made plasma dials + custom made gauge needles illumination in red color
- All interior lights changed to blue color
- Most of the plastics in the interior were painted in high gloss black

... and many more


My plans are to get the Lude back on the road and continue with the mods. I will update the topic very soon as I work on some interesting stuff now.

[Rudelude]

Nice Lude and great development. Well done for sticking it out for so long... And the dials look awesome.

[thusee]

looks great!

[wurlycorner]

Interested to hear more about the Frankenstein engine build - what/why/results etc.

[mercutio]

very nice buddy

[Drax]

Interested to hear more about the Frankenstein engine build - what/why/results etc.

agreed, sounds interesting xtuners tell tell!!

[xtuners]

There is nothing interesting about this engine. It is a non VTEC, 2 liter.
The engine is durable and you can turbo charge it. It is easy and cheap to fix even if you damage it somehow. Also many H23 parts like intake manifold, headers are just bolt on installation on the F20 block. People even put H23 and Vtec heads on this kind of blocks with a huge horse power gain. My engine has just 125 000 km on the clock and I think I will keep it for now. Some other members in this forum have installed turbos and they talk about 230-240 bhp on low boost with the stock internals.

My other option is to buy a donor car from UK and put a charger on the VTEC engine. Not sure if I can find a low miles engine line my own. What do you think?

[wurlycorner]

No, I know what the standard f20 is like, I meant I'm interested in hearing about the Frankenstein F20 / H23 build you say you've done on yours.
What bits have you swapped, why and what are the results?

[xtuners]

The Intake manifold + headers + exhaust pipes + muffler were swapped. I also removed the catalytic converter. The engine became much more responsive. It delivers more power from the low RPMs and also has more power between 4800- 6200 RPM. The car is much faster then the stock F20. I want to swap the head too. H23 non vtec head is almost a bolt on swap and should give extra power. I will need to buy another ECU and then I can dyno tune the car to see what the actual horsepower gain is. I have to fix a problem with the fuel adjustment too( running rich ). The gearbox is also an issue. This tiptronik gear box just makes the car slow in my opinion.

[xtuners]

Let me continue with an update.

For this month I have following plans:

1. I want to finally upgrade the front brakes to H23 282 mm rotors and calipers. The rear brakes will remain like they are, but I am going to order a brake caliper repair kit plus slotted brake disks.

The repair kit for the front brakes just arrived.



I will repaint the calipers maybe next weekend.
I want to use slotted disks for the front as well. Maybe it is time to make a small research and choose a good manufacturer of aftermarket disks
I want to exchange the OEM brake lines with aftermarket braided ones.


2. I want to make some progress with the work on the lip kit..
Two weeks ago I bought a Motegi lip kit from Ebay. Still waiting for the parts. .. Hope it's not the next Ebay scammer.
Next week I want to order the OEM style front lip from the Netherlands. Then I will paint the parts in silver and will make the final decision about the front lip. It will be a tough decision.

3. I decided to upgrade the gauge cluster one more time. The plasma dials have to go. LED mod is on the schedule.

Here is a sample image of the new design:



All gauge needles will be white ( will illuminate blue when it's dark ). The start position will be 6 O'clock. The RPM needle will change color from blue to red when the engine revs. The illumination of all four gauges will start with the engine and will be ON when the engine is running.

Pictures from the upgrade process: